DCS: P-47D-30 Discussion

Seems like the USAAF would do testing on the optimal velocity of the .50 caliber rounds and decide the best possible spread and convergence for maximum destruction.... and then the pilots would learn how to aim and dogfight to that specification.

 

The last thing you want is for 2nd Lieutenant Joe Blow thinking he needed his convergence set to 2 miles... and then complaining that he was dogfighting with BB pellets!

 

Also often times a plane was damaged and a pilot would have to fly someone else’s plane... they didn’t get to fly their own plane on a regular basis. It would be a pain in the butt to have to sight in new convergences every time you had to tail swap!

Plus, a pilot should be able to jump in any plane and have the same convergence.

it is somthing that was done

 

Yeah, but it was mostly done for experienced pilots only. So this should be tied to your virtual pilot's scores as well, now shouldn't it? I.e. the feature would only be unlocked after achieving, say, 5 aerial victories and/or 20 ground kills.

Yeah, but it was mostly done for experienced pilots only. So this should be tied to your virtual pilot's scores as well, now shouldn't it? I.e. the feature would only be unlocked after achieving, say, 5 aerial victories and/or 20 ground kills.

 

Given how many hours some people put in, and how easy it is to get kills, maybe make it you have to maintain some kill : death ratio ?

Yeah, perhaps so Weta. But we'd need a gatekeeping mechanism regardless IMO.

Or since this is a sim and not a Esport, engine on timers deal here, make it a part of the virtual hangar. Aka incorporate into f10, or a kneeboard thing like some of the modern stuff has.

 

My two cents

So you could just hop in a plane and adjust convergence on the fly before taking off? Agh :doh:

So you could just hop in a plane and adjust convergence on the fly before taking off? Agh :doh:

 

The kneeboard functionality is basically a stand in for the pilot and or mission briefing room currently where you do all that cool pre mission tactical stuff. So if they don't overhaul or add in a totally new system aka a pre mission briefing room where you can plan flight and your Airframe setup then Kneeboard is probably the quickest way to implement it.

 

I would much rather have a briefing room or Hanger type setup before flying myself.

 

:pilotfly:

No, the point is you should fookin' earn the right for adjustment, just as IRL.

You could argue that point, but it's been requested a while ago

.

 

I know it was requested again and again and maybe I missed it but I never see anything official telling anybody that it was on a "to do list". Would be enough to me to know thats it's going to be work and then I would wait. But I can't imagine this would not be implemented.

 

I.e. the feature would only be unlocked after achieving, say, 5 aerial victories and/or 20 ground kills.

 

Lock/unlock feature almost kill IL2 great battle. it was at first how the game work with all the field modification and the external armament possibilities (bomb, rocket, ..). I think this would be a really bad choice for DCS.

 

Seems like the USAAF would do testing on the optimal velocity of the .50 caliber rounds and decide the best possible spread and convergence for maximum destruction.... and then the pilots would learn how to aim and dogfight to that specification.

 

The last thing you want is for 2nd Lieutenant Joe Blow thinking he needed his convergence set to 2 miles... and then complaining that he was dogfighting with BB pellets!

 

Also often times a plane was damaged and a pilot would have to fly someone else’s plane... they didn’t get to fly their own plane on a regular basis. It would be a pain in the butt to have to sight in new convergences every time you had to tail swap!

 

Your point is right. there are lot of pilot that had to use not their plane because there were damaged or else. And I think all the personnalisation option on each warbirds should work like this :

 

- Pilots can modify personnal preference in setup page (where you find takeoff assist, ...). So there they could change their favorite convergence, their trim (like we have now for Bf109), ...

- Mission creator should have the possibility for each client/player plane to lock the convergence to a number of there choice (or a default valor).

 

If unlock, the plane take the pilot preferences.

If lock, the plane is set from the valor in the mission editor.

 

This would simulate both the possibility that a pilot have his plane or someone else plane for a particular mission. Same for ammo belt and even same for the 109 trim. That would be awesome. You could even set group of plane with squadron set as some squadron have particular setup for all their plane.

So they wouldn't have to earn the right then? OK, games for gamers, understood.

So they wouldn't have to earn the right then? OK, games for gamers, understood.

 

If I want a game to unlock things I go play war thunder. Here I prefer to have full ability to make choice as I explained in my previous post. Choice of the mission maker to accept or not the personnal settings of players planes. And nothing can stop anybody to make a script that tell "if KDR under x then lock, else unlock" ...

 

Sim is for simulate everything (or a maximum of things) to be as close as possible to the reality, even the smallest feature.

Field modification is one of the biggest feature of WW2. Some pilot chose to modify some minor things to their planes to have better chance of survivability.

 

Every pilots that had the chance to live long enough had the opportunity to modify their plane.

Some example :

Bf 109E with additionnal miror :

http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m83scidOU91rc7erjo1_500.jpg

Bf 109F of Galland (didn't find a picture of it), but it was a F2 with Emil armament (built from the factory because of his request but yes he was an aces so he can ask a lot).

http://www.thescalemodeller.co.za/content/images/thumbs/0000169_italeri-172-messerschmitt-bf-109-f24_550.jpeg

 

Another but without picture was the Malta Hurricane MKIIc. Those used to have 2 canon not 4 because they didn't have lot of 20 mm ammo. They let each plane with only ammo for 2 canon so they removed the two other to gain weight.

 

SAAF Spitfire used special sand filter that they built themselve. Those where as effective as original but smaller. Make those spitfire losing less performance than the Spit with the original filter.

 

P51 with on or two miror.

http://crosswindimages.com/img/s3/v39/p237166856.jpg

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS1BvBFDBH1N452NbIe6lb_7-1kVZIIktKbJSVHPA5sXHyc3u9N&s

 

Ju 87 without the wheel cover for mud and snow in russia :

https://www.fokkerc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/35629182_10216302281219180_696484188915761152_n.jpg

same for Fw 190

http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2869032290?profile=original

 

I can understand that DCS dev can't make all the different field modification that exist (too many). But the most classic should be accessible. Convergence, wheel cover (for muddy map), P51 miror, ... Those can be added easily to the game as it could work like the checkbox in Bf 109 that allow you to choose if you have a pistol or not in the cockpit.

 

DCS should really think about it as all the other ww2 sim allow that since their release. All the other sim understand the fact that field modification of planes is not something that happen few times. It was a common thing.

 

PS: In some squadron (in every country), field modified plane was the standard configuration. So this is another reason why i'm against that idea to lock/unlock feature because of a score/KDR.

Edited November 16, 2019 by JG13~Wulf

No, the point is you should fookin' earn the right for adjustment, just as IRL.

 

Either this, or nothing.

 

IRL only the 'Stars' got to personalise their convergence.

Maybe everybody thinks they should be a star, but if everyone's a star, no-one's a star.

No personalisation is more realistic than everyone gets personalisation.

 

If it's included, it should - like in real life - be for those that show they've earned it.

No personalisation is more realistic than everyone gets personalisation.

 

This precisely. You either have to earn it, as IRL, or you just won't get it.

Either this, or nothing.

 

IRL only the 'Stars' got to personalise their convergence.

Maybe everybody thinks they should be a star, but if everyone's a star, no-one's a star.

No personalisation is more realistic than everyone gets personalisation.

 

If it's included, it should - like in real life - be for those that show they've earned it.

 

This precisely. You either have to earn it, as IRL, or you just won't get it.

 

Waiting for proof that only special pilots could have field modification.

It's hard to discuss with people like you as you. You just say no but can't proof anything about it.

 

I can't imagine that you think mechanincs that repair gun and replace them didn't have the possibility to follow pilots request to set their gun to shoot closer than usual (250m -> 200m)

If pilot survive long enough to have gun replacement or gun reset, it was simple to ask for the reset to be at another convergence point ...

 

It was just needed to place a plane on a shooting range to then move some little screw to slightly move gun up/down and left/right. The main difference for mechanics was to put the plane at different distance of the test target. Then move the screw as usual to have gun shooting at the target. When the gun was alligned as usual with the target, then the gun convergence was correctly set.

 

At least if we could have variable preset for each plane and not complete personalised it would be a big step !

 

Show 2 different convergence settings for P47.

Show how gun setting was made. Just remember that you only need to put the P51 forward or back ward to change the convergence settings. Then mechanics have the same work to do to set the gun. (and check the image, left and right are not the same => 2 differents settings for P51).

If you read "The Big Show" by P. Clostermann, he said that lot of pilots asked for the right one. As he said, they were all bad at shooting so with this kind of setting, they had better chance to hit ennemy (even if it was with few rounds). This was common for new pilots !

Edited November 17, 2019 by JG13~Wulf

Waiting for proof

 

You don't seem to understand. It's YOU who needs to produce evidence for YOUR case, since it's YOU who wants things changed; whereas folks like myself and Weta are content with things the way they are, and thus under no obligation to prove anything. So where's YOUR evidence for this having been universally available for everyone on a mere request?

You don't seem to understand. It's YOU who needs to produce evidence for YOUR case, since it's YOU who wants things changed; whereas folks like myself and Weta are content with things the way they are, and thus under no obligation to prove anything. So where's YOUR evidence for this having been universally available for everyone on a mere request?

 

I think I give you lot of evidence that it was common thing.

But ok here is a first one :

In french, an interview of Pierre Clostermann clearly saying the following about the spit.

"If you loaded guns (7.7mm) with tracers to help aiming, you had one problem : tracers didn't had the same trajectory as 20mm shells. This was kind a problem and because we had other things to think about than making space geometry problems when shooting. So we could ask to mechanics to set 7.7 mm to shoot above 20 mm. But there would have still be problem because of the target distance it change the parameters of shoot. the result was we were all bad shooter."

 

This is not a perfect translation (word by word). Hope someone could translate better than me. But he clearly tell that they could ask for gun setting modification. Remember that at this period he had few kills with Spifire (6 confirmed kills in spit if I believe this : http://www.cieldegloire.com/004_clostermann.php ). Most of his aerial kills were made with Tempest (table at the end of the page).

 

Another one from Clostermann :

First time on Tempest. So at this moment he had 6 confirmed kills at least and we are in 1944 (after DDay) as he was on Spitfire until this year.

In this interview he said he received a new Tempest (completely new plane) and ground crew set his gun as he asked for. As you can understand, it seems that he knows the ground crew from the period he was on Spitfire (edit : correct half of the ground crew was from 602 squadron where he flew on Spit). So you could say that they do that for him ... But I still think it was common for all pilots.

 

He refer in the same interview about the "spray setting" (probably not well translated) but he explained this in his book and in several interview as guns were set to fire in a large area. The four guns of his Tempest and his Spitfire before were set to not converge all to one point. But several point.

 

I get another document about how the harmonisatiuon of gun was made. It not tells who could do that but it's explicit that you could set plane to a choosen convergence : https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28664/m1/1/

Edited November 17, 2019 by JG13~Wulf

I can't imagine that you think mechanincs that repair gun and replace them didn't have the possibility to follow pilots request to set their gun to shoot closer than usual (250m -> 200m)

If pilot survive long enough to have gun replacement or gun reset, it was simple to ask for the reset to be at another convergence point ...

 

It was just needed to place a plane on a shooting range to then move some little screw to slightly move gun up/down and left/right. The main difference for mechanics was to put the plane at different distance of the test target. Then move the screw as usual to have gun shooting at the target. When the gun was alligned as usual with the target, then the gun convergence was correctly set.

I know from a distance looks like a minor thing, but it's not "just" that easy as you say. It takes time, lots of time, but mechanics had better things to do than just adjusting daily all of the aircraft in a whole squadron. The same they had better things to do than painting cool nose arts in every single aircraft. Have you ever noticed how squad leaders had their aircraft all fashioned with paintings? and have you noticed either how every other aircraft in the squadron had exactly nothing at all painted? all those were just factory plain and boring paint. That means something mate. Not to mention, you have to have a proper facility range where you can do it, probably not suitable in many front line aerodromes. We all know some picture, we all know some story about setting convergence, but that wasn't just for everybody and shouldn't be confused with the fact that every flight simmer thinks of himself he's an ace deserving every frivolity real aces (a bunch among thousands) could enjoy. That's just unreal and being used to it in many old sims doesn't make it real.

 

 

S!

 

Anyways more important things....

I know from a distance looks like a minor thing, but it's not "just" that easy as you say. It takes time, lots of time, but mechanics had better things to do than just adjusting daily all of the aircraft in a whole squadron. The same they had better things to do than painting cool nose arts in every single aircraft. Have you ever noticed how squad leaders had their aircraft all fashioned with paintings? and have you noticed either how every other aircraft in the squadron had exactly nothing at all painted? all those were just factory plain and boring paint. That means something mate. Not to mention, you have to have a proper facility range where you can do it, probably not suitable in many front line aerodromes. We all know some picture, we all know some story about setting convergence, but that wasn't just for everybody and shouldn't be confused with the fact that every flight simmer thinks of himself he's an ace deserving every frivolity real aces (a bunch among thousands) could enjoy. That's just unreal and being used to it in many old sims doesn't make it real.

 

 

S!

 

For RAF there was facilities for that (firing range) that were not on all airport. They almost do that all the day there. In previous post I made, a pilot refer about this range because he wanted to set his P51 gun differently. => https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4016715&postcount=28

 

If you read the doc I linked previously : https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28664/m1/1/

 

There was a 8 step procedure to set the convergence. Here is the pages : https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28664/m1/20/

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28664/m1/21/

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28664/m1/22/

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28664/m1/23/

 

I think it take times, but not 1 day for a plane. And as they said, when bore sight was alligned with target, then it need only few adjustment. As they said in the text, this procedure is not so complex. And if you read in detail, they discuss the fact if pilot and ground crew don't have access to complete firing range. For this case, the target was put closer. Then it need a bit more calcul to set correctly the target to set the gun to the convergence point they want.

Remember the movie Pearl Harbor. Funny to use it as an example but they actually do that. At a moment they use a small firing range to set the guns of a P40. (was looking for picture and found this)

 

(don't tell me those picture were made at factory ...)

 

Even if it is a movie, this scene of Pearl Harbor seems historically correct (following previous doc). And I'm pretty sure people at this time had the hability to set the target as they needed to have the convergence they wanted on the plane they were working on.

 

Then, in the same doc you can find that armament need a complete inspection after 40 hours : https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28664/m1/28/

 

I think that air force of each country during ww2 had enough ground crew to set the guns of their planes to shoot at enemy planes. Your point saying it takes time so it wasn't done is a bit silly. By following this, you can erase all the "secondary" task they had to do. Such as inspecting engine or controls cable.

 

I think at this time it was pretty important for ground crew and pilots to be sure that guns were going to shoot where it is supposed to shoot.

 

Need more ... ?

Edited November 17, 2019 by JG13~Wulf

For RAF there was facilities for that (firing range) that were not on all airport.....

 

 

 

 

The way I have understood it from my readings of the US Army Air Corps being as we are talking in the P47 forum, was that there were maybe a couple of standardized convergence settings, mainly though I think they differentiated between what the squadron was tasked to do. I.E. the 8th AF fighters typically doing escort runs (depending on the year of course) and the 9th AF doing much more Close Air Support. I believe there were different range settings for primarily ground attack vs escort as well as ammo belting used.

 

The main problem though with going with exotic custom convergence settings for each pilot is the fact that most of the time, even when you got your own personalized aircraft in the group, that didn't mean you were the only pilot to fly it. Reasons being for scheduling pilots with availability and maintenance you had to switch things up. In that regard it's better to keep standardized settings so one pilot will know what to expect when they pull the trigger. It's much more important to be able to use the plane between different flight crews and use it rather than have each plane a special case that can only be used by one pilot. Having available airframes for a mission would definitely trump having each one only able to be used by one pilot.

 

This is not even to mention the fact that when guys in the USAAC went through initial gunnery training in the states and "clobber college" in theater they used the standard convergence settings on all those aircraft. By reasoning if you get pretty comfortable shooting with those settings, why would you want to suddenly change that up while flying combat. It was WWII, pretty much anything and everything happened that you can imagine, just by the sheer scale of it all. I'm sure custom convergence was used by some guy at some point in the USAAC but I'm thinking it was a very rare thing overall. I'm not sure about the RAF and other airforces, maybe they just had a surplus of aircraft the US didn't have (aka very doubtful) and could customize each airframe and only have one pilot for each one and still be able to operate at squadron strength, but for the USAAC I feel pretty confident that it was very rare overall.

 

 

Talking about the P-47 specifically from the book "Hell Hawks"

 

 

 

 

Here is a previous post I made on it for the P-51 Mustang that includes an excerpt mentioning group harmonization.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3203488&postcount=37

The way I have understood it from my readings of the US Army Air Corps being as we are talking in the P47 forum, was that there were maybe a couple of standardized convergence settings, mainly though I think they differentiated between what the squadron was tasked to do. I.E. the 8th AF fighters typically doing escort runs (depending on the year of course) and the 9th AF doing much more Close Air Support. I believe there were different range settings for primarily ground attack vs escort as well as ammo belting used.

 

The main problem though with going with exotic custom convergence settings for each pilot is the fact that most of the time, even when you got your own personalized aircraft in the group, that didn't mean you were the only pilot to fly it. Reasons being for scheduling pilots with availability and maintenance you had to switch things up. In that regard it's better to keep standardized settings so one pilot will know what to expect when they pull the trigger. It's much more important to be able to use the plane between different flight crews and use it rather than have each plane a special case that can only be used by one pilot. Having available airframes for a mission would definitely trump having each one only able to be used by one pilot.

 

This is not even to mention the fact that when guys in the USAAC went through initial gunnery training in the states and "clobber college" in theater they used the standard convergence settings on all those aircraft. By reasoning if you get pretty comfortable shooting with those settings, why would you want to suddenly change that up while flying combat. It was WWII, pretty much anything and everything happened that you can imagine, just by the sheer scale of it all. I'm sure custom convergence was used by some guy at some point in the USAAC but I'm thinking it was a very rare thing overall. I'm not sure about the RAF and other airforces, maybe they just had a surplus of aircraft the US didn't have (aka very doubtful) and could customize each airframe and only have one pilot for each one and still be able to operate at squadron strength, but for the USAAC I feel pretty confident that it was very rare overall.

 

 

Talking about the P-47 specifically from the book "Hell Hawks"

 

 

[ATTACH]221286[/ATTACH]

 

 

Here is a previous post I made on it for the P-51 Mustang that includes an excerpt mentioning group harmonization.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3203488&postcount=37

 

If we could at least have the possibility to choose in a list of preset (fighter, ground attack, precise area, large area, ...), it would be awesome. A big step from what we have at the moment.

Options are always nice, varying the ammo belts would be a much more realistic option than convergence variance. Without a more detailed damage model (coming soonish?) it really wouldn't matter much being able to set different patterns or much difference in ammo belting.

 

 

 

I mean if you can't hit someone at 300 yds setting your convergence to 350 or 250 yds isn't really going to help matters that much. A lot of research was done by the Army Air Corps on the best settings to use all around with their 50 cals. It must've been a decent choice...reference the luftwaffe being clobbered out of the sky by the USAAC.

If we could at least have the possibility to choose in a list of preset (fighter, ground attack, precise area, large area, ...), it would be awesome. A big step from what we have at the moment.

 

Even this seems far-fetched.

 

The P-47’s in the 8th Airforce would escort bombers on a portion of their bombing route. Once they had reached a specific waypoint, P-38’s (or P-51’s) would relieve them. If the P-47’s had left over ammo they’d roam the countryside on their way back home and strafe anything that looked like a target. Sometimes they’d purposely swing wide on their trip home to strafe a specific runway.

 

In this instance, their 1st priority was A2A escort, yet they still successfully strafed ground targets.

 

There are also several accounts of Hell Hawks going in to strafe specific ground targets and being bounced by BF-109’s.

 

So this instance the original mission called for A2G but quickly changed to A2A.

 

In either scenario, if your guns were set for a specific mission, you’d be screwed when the mission abruptly changed!!!

 

Especially if you had your way and chose the “large area” gun convergence.... and then was jumped by 109’s.

 

Sounds like maybe you need to play 1942 or Galaga so you can collect icons that change your bullet speed and spread... and also add the little wingman that will follow you around... maybe collect enough icons bouncing around the map and you’ll be able to fully upgrade your weapons into single beam lasers that can shoot down 10 enemies in a row!!!